“I am the best living recording artist,” said Kanye West in a video shared via Periscope on Saturday. After a 10-day social media hiatus, West is back with some big thoughts to impart, and it’s a lot to break down. He talks about working on new music, his Saturday Night Live appearance, and his publishing deal with Sony/ATV Music, but he focused his nine-minute stream of consciousness on the concepts of mind control and positive vibes.
“When people try to influence you through social media and try to tell you what to do. Or if you post something on that’s positive on Instagram and it gets taken down if it’s not a part of a bigger agenda. You know, that’s like mind control,” West explains via Periscope. Pre-hiatus, West posted a series of screenshots of conversations on Instagram he’s had with heads of major social media platforms including Twitter and Snapchat as he questioned what follower counts and likes really do to our perceived self-worth and mental health. On a larger note, this is a worthwhile conversation to have, but it gets completely lost when mixed in with the rest of what West has to say.
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“I just got back my IQ scores and they were Mensa level: 133, 98th percentile,” West continued. This is when the rabbit hole we are going down becomes readily apparent. “I feel like when people try to tell me what to do, I feel like they’re touching my brain.” As West closes his eyes and rubs his temple, he compares this to women’s bodily autonomy and agency (Not sure it’s quite the same, Ye). West brings up how he felt censored during his SNL appearance, and how he offered to buy his publishing contract from Sony/ATV music for $8-9 million but was turned down. He questions whether reality and what’s on the news and social media are the same. “Social media told you that Hillary was going to win, and she didn’t win,” said West. (Actually, those were polls of likely voters and not social media.) “Social media told you that people didn’t like me, but everybody loves me. Everybody loves Ye.” We’ll have to check the polls on that one too, Ye.
Mind control https://t.co/YDYXQ45bDL
— ye (@kanyewest) October 13, 2018
West is currently in an undisclosed location in Africa. Based on a couple other Periscope live stream titles, he’s posted seven in the last 24 hours ranging from 16 seconds to just over 20 minutes, it would appear that he is in Uganda.
It’s not clear what West is getting at in this video, but after his already infamous meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday, people are looking on in confusion like they were earlier this year before the rapper’s album Ye was released. At this point, West being confusing and controversial has gone from novel to normal.